Slow cooker french onion soup with cheese toasts

Making French onion soup can be a bit of a faff, especially when it comes to caramelising the onions, but if you're not in a hurry, you can use a slow cooker to make it instead.

Information

• Makes: 2 or 3 large helpings
• Time: 15 minutes prep + 8.5 hours in the slow cooker

Ingredients

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For the soup

• 800g onions
• 40g butter
• 1.5Tsp brown sugar
• 1.5Tsp Thyme (optional)
• 2 beef or veg stock cubes
• 1.2L water

For the cheese toasts

• 1 baguette
• Strong cheddar cheese

For the butter toasted apples

• 1 apple
• 30g butter

Method

For the soup

1. Peel and finely slice the onions. Use a food processor if you have one because it'll get the slices just right and it's a lot quicker.
2. If you're including the Thyme, strip the leaves off the stalks until you have about 1.5 Tsp. If you can't get fresh Thyme, use 0.5Tsp of dried Thyme instead.
3. Dice the butter and chuck it into the slow cooker with the onions, Thyme, and the sugar.
4. Put the slow cooker on high for 8 hours. Come back every couple of hours or so and give the onions a bit of a stir.
5. When the 8 hours is up, crumble the stock cubes into the slow cooker and add 1.2 Litres of water, then put the slow cooker back on high for another 30 minutes.

For the cheese toasts

1. Meanwhile, set the oven to 180c (fan assisted), then slice the baguette (or as much of it as you want) and lay the slices on a baking tray.
2. Cover the baguette slices in as much grated cheddar as you like, and stick them in the oven for about 10 minutes (or until the cheese has melted and the bread is thoroughly toasted).

For the butter toasted apples

1. Peel and core the apple, then roughly chop into chunks.
2. Melt the butter in a frying pan, then toss in the apples and cook for about 10 minutes (or until they're golden brown).

Serve the soup with the cheese toasts and butter toasted apples on the side.

Notes

This is one of those recipes where you don't need to be too exact with the measurements. The Thyme is optional, but I do recommend including it because it rounds out the flavour. Everything else is fairly flexible (within reason).

Use the strongest cheddar you can find for the toasts. The longer cheddar matures the saltier it becomes, eventually getting an almost crunchy texture. The idea is that the cheddar punches through the sweetness of the soup.

Avoid using a fresh baguette for the toasts if you can. If it's a couple of days old it'll toast better. You can grill the toasts if you prefer, but baking them in the oven makes them more like large croutons than melted cheese on toast, which makes them less likely to disintegrate the moment you dunk them in your soup.

If you decide to make the butter toasted apples, use an eating apple (like a Braeburn) not a cooking apple for the butter toasted apples. Cooking apples tend to get mushy when cooked, and you want these apples to stay firm in texture.